We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Boys in all ethnic groups and social classes are far less likely than their sisters to feel connected to school, to earn good grades, or to have high academic aspirations. A recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research documents a remarkable trend among high-achieving students: In the 1980s, nearly the same number of top male and female high school students said they planned to pursue a postgraduate degree (13 percent of boys and 15 percent of girls). By the 2000s, 27 percent of girls expressed that ambition, compared with 16 percent of boys. During the same period, the gap between girls and boys earning mostly A’s nearly doubled—from three to five percentage points.
This gap in education engagement has dire economic consequences for boys.
As I have said before, all boys have some ADD. The best male students have some OCD to compensate.
Took the BD daughter with her special friend to birthday brunch near her new place in Hell's Kitchen. We brought her cookies from Verona, and she brought us condiments from Tokyo from which she had just returned.
It's not hell anymore. Hopping neighborhood. We went to 44X10 (corner of 10th Ave. and W. 44th). Did Alicia Keys really grow up there?
The wait staff wore t-shirts saying "Heaven in Hell." Rule of thumb: Always make reservations.
I can remember when this area was Irish and black gangland, creepy. When you see this many gay fellows, you know it is gentrifying. I had scrambled eggs, grits, and sausages. The others had better stuff: Eggs Benedict with Crab Cakes, etc.
Gears are ubiquitous in the man-made world, found in items ranging from wristwatches to car engines, but it seems that nature invented them first.
A species of plant-hopping insect, Issus coleoptratus, is the first living creature known to possess functional gears, a new study finds. The two interlocking gears on the insect's hind legs help synchronize the legs when the animal jumps.
Burrows and a colleague captured the gears' motion using high-speed video. As the young bug prepares to leap, it meshes the gear teeth of one leg with those of the other, like cocking a gun. Then, the insect releases its legs in one smooth, explosive motion.
Learn somethin' new every day.
Bite me, Darwinists!
Of course, not everyone might agree. My own post on the 'How we got here' question is here.
The first of these is a location story, the second is the ol' online-vs-retail story. Both make the same point while coming at it from different angles.
About five years ago I needed a tire for my Firebird. The guy who owned it before me apparently wasn't a very good parallel parker and the right-front was all chewed up.
Being on a Firebird, it was a pretty hefty piece of meat, so I knew it was going to be a little pricey.
I first called a Cuban buddy of mine up in Miami and asked him if he had any buds in the biz, which he did. I gave him the size, he did some inquiring, and his buddy's best price was $135. Given that the local Goodyear place wanted $168, that sounded like a winner.
But then I figured I should probably call the local tire shops and ask them if they had any 'specials' going on. You never can tell. I called two of them.
"Hi, got any specials going on?"
"Nope."
"Okay, thanks, bye."
Then I noticed some tiny place called something like "Bill's Tires". This time I didn't ask about any specials, just explained what I needed. Ol' Bill fumbled around in the catalog for a minute.
$89.
The shop was a block away.
Bought the tire, it looked just the others, worked perfectly.
When it all began, I would have bet you that $89 that (1) the most expensive quote I'd get would be here in our exclusive little tropical island paradise hideaway, and (2) my buddy's buddy, who owned a tire shop up in Cubantown, would have the cheapest.
$89 instead of $135. One block away.
It pays to shop around.
And, given what we've seen in past online-vs-retail stories, this next one is a little bizarre.
My attention was drawn to this article recently, though it is several years old. An intriguing method of balancing desires and scarce resources. I am reminded of my youth and music, playing a record I enjoyed over and over again until, at some point, I just didn't want to listen to that great song or album anymore.
I doubt I would have employed Ayn Rand's rationale if asked to choose my toys when I was young. Delayed gratification isn't something most of us understand until later in life. Today, however, I take a very different view about how I employ things I enjoy. I realize my enjoyment can wear thin quickly, so I tend to not 'overplay the record'.
Fifty years ago, psychologists played a cunning trick on a bunch of American four-year-olds. They were given a marshmallow and told that if they waited for 20 minutes before eating it, they could have another one. Most cracked within seconds, but about one in three held out and – with suitably smug expressions, no doubt – got two sickly confections when the experimenter came back into the room. Their careers have been tracked to the present day, and the goody two-shoes among them (I am sure I would have scoffed the sweet at once) seemed to be healthier, to do better at school, and to have more controlled and perhaps happier lives than those who gave in.
Austrian Economics is deeply concerned with 'time-preference' and its impact on the market, because choosing between immediate and delayed pleasures are part of what drive the market. This explains, to some degree, the general opposition to Keynesian stimuli.
That conclusion should be obvious. Roughly 48 percent of our college graduates are in jobs that the require less than a four-year degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the future looks worse: growth in the number of graduates in this decade is likely to be nearly three times as great as the projected number of jobs requiring such degrees. Despite incredibly lax standards (the typical full-time student spends about 30 hours a week on academic matters) and rampant grade inflation, well over 40 percent of entering students fail to graduate within six years.
That conclusion should be obvious. Roughly 48 percent of our college graduates
are in jobs that the require less than a four-year degree, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the future looks worse: growth in the number of
graduates in this decade is likely to be nearly three times as great as the
projected number of jobs requiring such degrees.Despite
incredibly lax standards (the typical
full-time student spends about 30 hours a week on academic matters) and
rampant
grade inflation, well over 40 percent of entering students fail to
graduate
within six years. - See more at:
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/08/too_many_people_are_going_to_c.html#sthash.MdCB3djG.dpuf
That conclusion should be obvious. Roughly 48 percent of our college graduates
are in jobs that the require less than a four-year degree, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the future looks worse: growth in the number of
graduates in this decade is likely to be nearly three times as great as the
projected number of jobs requiring such degrees.Despite
incredibly lax standards (the typical
full-time student spends about 30 hours a week on academic matters) and
rampant
grade inflation, well over 40 percent of entering students fail to
graduate
within six years. - See more at:
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/08/too_many_people_are_going_to_c.html#sthash.MdCB3djG.dpuf
That conclusion should be obvious. Roughly 48 percent of our college graduates
are in jobs that the require less than a four-year degree, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the future looks worse: growth in the number of
graduates in this decade is likely to be nearly three times as great as the
projected number of jobs requiring such degrees.Despite
incredibly lax standards (the typical
full-time student spends about 30 hours a week on academic matters) and
rampant
grade inflation, well over 40 percent of entering students fail to
graduate
within six years. - See more at:
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/08/too_many_people_are_going_to_c.html#sthash.MdCB3djG.dpuf
Shopping for electronics at Best Buy already feels like some kind of hidden camera prank, with staff who never want to help and rarely know a thing about the gear they're selling. But an artist who refers to himself as Plastic Jesus took things one step further by secretly stocking Best Buy displays in LA with a useless plastic box complete with a description of the non-existent product.
And then there's the "useless" empty plastic 'Project Box' from Radio Shack, just waiting to be stuffed with batteries and switches and relays and all kinds of fun electronic goodies:
Best of all, compared to the Best Buy price, the $14.99 Radio Shack wants is a steal!
Knowing the full-truth that unites the human race, and not teaching all is deathly guilt, learned carpenter Jesus from Mason Rabbi Hillel! But Marx, innocent grandson of 2 rabbies, learned only half truth! As Mao wrote in Redbook 51: Marxist-Communism, once in power, is utterly unworkable, has less value then cowdung. Its power is the gun! What an apology we Rabbis owe Israel, Marx, Mao, all mankind, for not teaching Astronomy's great All-One-God-Faith, that with just 6 words eternally unites the human race! As teaches African-shepherd Astronomer Israel for 6000 years, LISTEN CHILDREN ETERNAL FATHER ETERNALLY ONE! For on God's Spaceship Earth, with Bomb and Gun, we are All-One or none! All-One! All-One! All-One! Exceptions eternally? Absolute none!
Got that? It's deep and makes good sense (if you are on an acid trip).
It's the hippy soap, Dr. Bronner's. It's organic, whatever that means. When I saw the bottle, I remembered this stuff. Knew a hippy-styled girl in college who used it.
On the top of Maggie's Farm, we seem to reject being subject to the efforts of do-gooders. Is the road to hell paved with good intentions? Do-gooders always seem to either want my money, or want to control me.
In just eight dense pages, Prof. Oakley covers a lot of ground and goes far beyond the Law of Unintended Consequences. She touches on psychology, science, medicine, philosophy, and politics. It's a remarkable paper which indeed pulls enough threads together to represent a potential paradigm shift. One quote:
The bottom line is that the heartfelt, emotional basis of our good intentions can mislead us about what is truly helpful for others. Altruistic intentions must be run through the sieve of rational analysis; all too often, the best long-term action to help others, at both personal and public scales, is not immediately or intuitively obvious, not what temporarily makes us feel good, and not what is being promoted by other individuals, with their own potentially self-serving interests.
Indeed, truly altruistic actions may some-times appear cruel or harmful, the equivalent of saying no to the student who demands a higher grade or to the addict who needs another hit. However, the social consequences of appearing cruel in a culture that places high value on kindness, empathy, and altruism can lead us to misplaced "helpful" behavior and result in self-deception regarding the consequences of our actions.
THE IDEA THAT VIOLENCE in human society has decreased over time invites scepticism, incredulity and sometimes anger. It hasn’t been a smooth decline – and it isn’t guaranteed to continue – but it is a persistent historical development, visible on scales from millennia to years, from the waging of wars to the spanking of children. The human mind predisposes us to believe that we live in violent times – especially when stoked by news media that follows the watchwords: “If it bleeds, it leads.” We tend to estimate the probability of an event based on the ease with which we can recall examples, and scenes of carnage are more likely to be beamed into our homes and burned into our memories than footage of people dying of old age.
No matter how small the percentage of violent deaths may be, in absolute numbers there will always be enough to fill the evening news. This disconnects our impressions of violence from actual proportions. Also, distorting our sense of danger is part of our moral psychology: no one has ever recruited activists to a cause by announcing that the world’s becoming a better place.
One purpose of The Moral Sense was, as Wilson put it, “to help people recover the confidence with which they once spoke about virtue and morality.” The other goal was to trace the origins of human morality. Summoning an array of anthropological evidence, Wilson elaborated on the idea that our moral sense is innate, acquired not through learning but through evolution. These sentiments do not spring to life fully formed; instead, they are cultivated within family and society. Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson had advanced the idea of inborn moral affinity but Wilson enlarged upon it, proposing that the moral sense rested upon four foundational pillars: sympathy, fairness, self-control, and duty.
Picasso and Truth: From Cubism to Guernica, by T J Clark, review: "When Picasso was asked
why he had painted so few landscapes, he replied that he had never seen any."
As far as the old-style rationalists were concerned, any desire to ritualise death and remember the dead was a sign of a failure of nerve, and an inability to grow out of religious indoctrination – especially all that Christian stuff about personal survival, arraignment before a divine judge and consignment to heaven or hell. But in fact Christianity does not speak with one voice when it comes to death and dying. In the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus issued a severe reprimand to a disciple who wanted to give his father a proper funeral: get back to work at once, he said, and “let the dead bury their dead.” The rebuke may seem like an enlightened anticipation of 20th-century rationalism, but it is also perfectly consistent with some main doctrines of Christianity: if the body is just a temporary home for an immortal soul, and a perpetual temptation to sin, then the sooner we shuffle it off the better.
Any age has its darkness, and the age of modernism was decidedly not an exception. Kramer pointed out that even Eliot had "illustrated the apparently unavoidable paradox that the advent of modernism brought with it the seeds of its own perpetual renovation." This "perpetual renovation" had the potential for decadence as surely as it had the promise of fresh insights into the particularities of modern life, and no one knew this better than Kramer. Much of his life as a critic was spent exposing the humbuggery and snake oil that is often gathered under the label of "postmodernism" (or of "modernism" for that matter).
Really? The best he can? Does he need to try harder? Maybe that will make it all right. I thought he was a pro, so trying wasn't going to be the issue. That was why he was elected, because all the reasons given here were not acceptable for his predecessor. Regardless of what you thought of Bush, it's fair to say he was also doing everything De Niro says Obama is doing, but I doubt De Niro would have provided Bush a similar benefit of the doubt.
“He’s trying his best. He’s going to do things that people feel are not right or violating one right or another. But at the end of the day, he represents, I think, the best of the type of people that I would like to see running the government,” De Niro told DuJour. ”He has to play that game, the political game. They all do. They make statements they can’t honor because they’re impossible to honor. Once you get into that Washington machinery, you’ve just got to figure it out and swim against the current and grab onto this rock and that, and just try to maintain your course.”
De Niro is a great actor, but when he and his Hollywood cohorts involve themselves in politics, they really make a hash of it. They reason they can do this? Apathy.
America has already once made a change on the scale of that which is happening now. That was when it transformed itself from the rural and agrarian society of the founding era — which we call America 1.0 — to the urban and industrial society that peaked in the mid-20th century — which we call America 2.0. That earlier transition, from roughly 1860 to 1920, was more painful than most people think. Yet the transformed, industrial America became the wonder of the world.
The American political and economic regime now in crisis was built for the world of America 2.0. Today, we are in the midst of a dramatic transition.
The American political and economic regime now in crisis was built for the world of America 2.0. Today, we are in the midst of a dramatic transition to a new technological and political configuration — which we call America 3.0. Institutions that once looked permanent are cracking at the foundations. Technology will drive the transition, and the shape of future technology can only be known in broad outline.
Most importantly, the cultural foundation of America, based on its unique type of family life, will remain intact. This is the continuous thread linking each of the three “versions” of America. Our deeply rooted orientation toward personal and economic freedom will allow us to dismantle America 2.0 and build a better, freer, and more prosperous America 3.0 in its place.
The speakers on a stock Windows system do not sound their best. You need to make a small adjustment or two.
First, start playing a rock song (or anything with a good bass track) in the background.
— Open Control Panel, 'Sound'
— Click on 'Speakers', 'Properties'
— Click on the 'Enhancements' tab
— Check the 'Loudness Equalization' box, then 'Apply' down below. It should either stay the same or get a bit louder. This feature plays quieter-than-normal songs slightly louder to compensate.
— If you don't have a subwoofer on your system, you might want to check the 'Bass Boost' box, then 'Apply' and see what you think. It might lower the overall volume a tad but the bass will be louder.
To make sure the overall volume of the system is up, there should be a little speaker icon in the SysTray on the right side of the Task Bar. Click on it and slide the volume all the way up.
With that taken care of, it's time for a system test. Ideally, we want a sound file that will test low frequency response, high frequency response, transient response, tracking and speaker balance.
Thankfully, there's a cut on the 1974 National Lampoon Stereo Test And Demonstration Record that satisfies all of these grueling parameters. Turn your speakers way up, make sure you're right in between them, and listen carefully:
"Well, good luck!"
The entire album can be downloaded here, although be forewarned that the above stands alone in its majesty — rusty, vibrant tang and all.
Many cops and firemen in NYC retire at age 40 with a $120K-a-year pension. When they die, the money goes to their spouse. It’s the same with most union men in this city. I know a union electrician here who easily clears $100K a year and he’s only 32. There is a huge demand for his level of expertise and if he doesn’t feel like working, he can rent his license out to a site that’s dying for it. Sometimes the union even pays him not to work because they want to give some new kids a chance. A few weekends ago, he and his buddies made $10K each. The job was past deadline so everyone had to work around the clock. That meant they’d bring cots and add up their breaks until they could take a six-hour stretch on the mat. Staying at the site all weekend meant overtime became time-and-a-half became double overtime, and by the time Sunday night rolled around, they were making more than most doctors. The client was happy because having these guys all weekend is cheaper than the late fees he was going to have to pay.
All of the following headlines were spotted on my daily rounds in the MSM over the past three years. I didn't specifically hunt down any of them just for the post.
You have to admit, dedicating an official work day to goofing off and calling it Labor Day has to be one the great malaprops of all time. And it has to be more than a little ironic that what started off as a day commemorating one of America's greatest achievements — the unionization of America's workers against the tyranny of the 'barons' of their day (child labor, anyone?) — now represents a big chunk of what's wrong with America. I s'pose entitlements and overall government largesse roughly account for another big piece. If there's one core word that encompasses the entire quagmire, it would be the word unsustainable. Just ask the U.S. Postal Service and the jam it's gotten itself into because of its inability to lay off highly-paid unionized postal workers.
Nonetheless, happy Unlaborious Day, everyone! If you're looking for something to do, I have some suggestions below.
Finally! At last you don't have some cheap, paltry excuse to hand the wife on why you can't get to all of those fix-it jobs that have been piling up!
Rather than this being a "how-to" site, it's more like a "Can I do it?" site, and should give you a pretty good idea as to whether you can handle it yourself. And, in the course of finding out 'if' you also find out 'how', so much the better.
A water heater is a pretty good example. Because they're large, they look kind of forbidding, and most people's first thought would be to call the plumber if it started to leak. But when you actually look at what exactly needs to be unhooked, it's really quite simple, and bendable supply lines mean you don't have to get an exact replacement for the pipes on top. And, just between you and me, a pipe wrench is probably cheaper than a 4-hour visit from the plumber.
I rarely write unless I have something new to add to the narrative, or at least have a fresh slant on something. The OJ jury got it right. Magellan was a fraud. Maggie's Farm is politically centrist. You know, the usual kind of wild hyperbole you expect to see in the blogosphere.
For your visual delight, here's one of the best pictorial galleries and video collections in town. If you're really looking to while away the day, there are some
full-length features on the 'Special Vids' page, and, if you're into
movies, I daresay there's nothing out there quite like 'Doc's Bag O'
Clips'.
If you (1) like exercising some control over your system, but (2) have installed Win 7 and are frustrated by its lack of user control, take a peek at my Win 7 setup page. I've spent a serious number of hours tracking down the tweaks to most of the common complaints, such as eliminating garbage from the right-mouse-button 'context' menu, the 'New' menu, getting rid of the "Shortcut to" tag, changing the path to IE's 'Favorites', and disabling those ultra-annoying pops-outs from the Task Bar icons.
I'd also blushingly add that I've never seen anything even close to my 'Facts & Fallacies' page. You read every word on that page and I guarantee you'll come away with a different perspective.
I presume you've heard of Google Earth? It basically lets you fly around the globe in your own personal space ship, then zoom in to look at your topless neighbor sunbathing majestic peaks and valleys. It's a series of patched-together images from every spot on the globe, and there are big sites out there dedicated to posting the latest crazy/odd/mystifying/beautiful spots people find. You click on the link and the program flies you there. Very slick.
For example, there are huge compass roses out there that you'd never have a clue what they were from the ground, as well as a whole shitload of wild hedge mazes, cities and terrain in 3-D (you can fly between buildings and down the Grand Canyon), real-time airline tracking, real-time weather, strange 3,000-year-old geoglyphic inscriptions spanning the length of a football field — and that's not to mention some very convincing alien crop circles.
I've put together a number of video tours to show off this remarkable program. The 'Google Goofs' tour is a riot.
Presenting the best way to get a blog or web site going, bar none. Apart from it probably being the largest WordPress how-to site out there (50,000 words @ 82 pages), it also gets into how to turn this great blogging software into web software. This is a key point, because if you want a business web site, you don't want all that blog-y stuff around like 'Author', 'Category', 'Comments', etc. And, once you get rid of that, it's a superb editor for a web site, business or informational.
Want to get into the Guinness Book of World Records with a monumental achievement that will last until the end of time? Want to get on TV at the Olympics? Want to actually contact every member of Congress, not just their flunkies? Want to make a bzillion dollars? The answers lie within.
Well, that oughta keep ya busy for an hour or two.
The first of these is a location story, the second is the ol' online-vs-retail story. Both make the same point while coming at it from different angles.
Knowing the full-truth that unites the human race, and not teaching all is deathly guilt, learned carpenter Jesus from Mason Rabbi Hillel! But Marx, innocent grandson of 2 rabbies, learned only half truth! As Mao wrote in Redbook 51: Marxist-Communism, once in power, is utterly unworkable, has less value then cowdung. Its power is the gun! What an apology we Rabbis owe Israel, Marx, Mao, all mankind, for not teaching Astronomy's great All-One-God-Faith, that with just 6 words eternally unites the human race! As teaches African-shepherd Astronomer Israel for 6000 years, LISTEN CHILDREN ETERNAL FATHER ETERNALLY ONE! For on God's Spaceship Earth, with Bomb and Gun, we are All-One or none! All-One! All-One! All-One! Exceptions eternally? Absolute none! 
The speakers on a stock Windows system do not sound their best. You need to make a small adjustment or two.
You have to admit, dedicating an official work day to goofing off and calling it Labor Day has to be one the great malaprops of all time. And it has to be more than a little ironic that what started off as a day commemorating one of America's greatest achievements — the unionization of America's workers against the tyranny of the 'barons' of their day (child labor, anyone?) — now represents a big chunk of what's wrong with America. I s'pose entitlements and overall government largesse roughly account for another big piece. If there's one core word that encompasses the entire quagmire, it would be the word unsustainable. Just ask the U.S. Postal Service and the jam it's gotten itself into because of its inability to lay off highly-paid unionized postal workers.
